Doing Math on the River Styx
by Pseudinymous
Summary: Something must be done. The prophecy is in: If Danny fails any more classes, he's got a one-way ticket into becoming the harbinger of the apocalypse. In light of this, Technus and the Ghostwriter are roped into tutoring him... if they can get along for more than five minutes. [Phic Phight / Team Ghost / Prompt by Zainymusings]
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

My favourite prompt. Multi-chaptering it because why the heck not. Nomii, if you're reading this, I'll submit this story to you along with the total word count once it's finished. No need to tally up the words just yet.

* * *

Prompt by Zainymusings / ZombieMerlin / BabyPorcupine_CuteButDEADLY!:

_In an effort to keep Danny from failing out of Casper High and becoming Dan, the ghosts band together to tutor Danny in various subjects (Technus in math, Ghostwriter in Language Arts, etc.) Shenanigans ensue._

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**Doing Math on the River Styx  
**~ **1** ~

* * *

"I, TECHNUS, GHOST MASTER OF ALL THINGS ELECTRONIC AND BEEPING, COMMAND THE GHOST CHILD TO FIND THE VALUE OF X!"

The Ghostwriter looked vacantly at Technus as if his brains were about to leak out of his ears, and for the first time in his life Danny felt as if he might agree. The three of them had been locked away in this library for all of fifteen minutes and they were already getting on each other's nerves, but anything to prevent Danny from turning into the dreaded Dan Phantom was worth it. So here they were.

"You can't just command him to find the value of x, Technus. You actually have to teach," said the Ghostwriter, somehow keeping his patience. "Not everyone has a way with numbers, you know. He can't just magic the answer out of thin air."

Technus stared at him, dumbstruck. "Really? Human children can't do that?"

"Most people can't do that," the Ghostwriter lamented, head within his hands. "Look at him, he's just staring into that piece of paper as if the world itself is coming to an end. That's not the look of someone who has clarity on a topic, Nicolai."

"Fine then, you teach him!"

"Me? Teach math? In what universe? Christ, I'd pass out."

"Will the both of you just shut _up_?!" Danny finally yelled, his voice shuddering the non-existent library foundations and sending them both silent. "Maybe I can do this! But we're never going to find out if you just keep arguing with each other!"

Both ghosts suddenly realised their position in all of this — namely having gotten out of their chairs in the heat of that mildly passionate debate — and retook their seats quickly in their own embarrassment. "Sorry," muttered the Ghostwriter, quietly. Technus didn't apologise. What a surprise.

"… So, what part of this equation do you not understand?" said Technus, eventually.

"X," said Danny, and Writer let out a smirk from the background. "I mean where are you even supposed to get the x _from_?"

Technus was feeling confident.

"You start with the first part of the equation, then you do the equation in your head, and then you only have x leftover."

Danny's head hit the desk. "Are you joking? That doesn't make any sense at all!"

"He's right, it doesn't," said the Ghostwriter, matter-of-factly. Technus glared at him. "If it's any consolation, I'd like to use my keyboard to bend reality such that he would learn everything he ever needed to know in an instant, but unfortunately he destroyed it last Christmas."

"Don't remind me," Danny moaned. "I can't take much more of this, I gotta go home."

Technus wasn't having a bar of this. "The value of x is 16! _16_!" he yelled, as if that would make his point clearer. "See! Now you can do this type of problem! Now you can find the next value of x!"

Danny stood up from his chair about as calmly as he could manage. "Thanks, but I think I'd rather just learn the normal way from Lancer. I'm—"

"—What about literature?" the Ghostwriter cut in desperately, after watching his afterlife flash before his eyes. "Math might not be your strong point, but there's more than just one subject."

Danny looked at Ghostwriter as if he, too, had as much of a hole in his head as Technus. "Really? And are you gonna be any better at this than the Lord of Electricity over here?"

"I'm legitimately qualified to teach. Unlike the Lord of Electricity over there, as you so aptly put it."

"… What? Seriously?"

"You don't honestly think I made any money writing novels, do you?" asked the writer, looking a bit too wry for Danny's liking. "No one does. I would've starved without a side job."

Technus suddenly stood up. "ACTUALLY HE NEVER PUBLISHED ANY NOVELS, HE—"

A book came out of nowhere and smashed heavily into the back of Technus's head. Danny watched him arc gracefully through the air, face aghast and twisting as he went, before he was gracelessly plastered all over the wooden library floor. The Ghostwriter's brow was raised. "Oh," he said. "How did that ever happen?"

"_TELEKINESIS ISN'T FAIR GHOSTWRITER_."

"And why not? You're perfectly capable yourself."

"_YOU KNOW IT'S ONLY ON TECHNOLOGY! BUT WE'RE STUCK IN THIS PLACE WITH ALL OF YOUR THINGS, YOU—_"

A book mysteriously slid off its shelf and landed on straight on top of Technus, striking his head a second time. "Oh, it seems after three decades I'm still having accidents, I'm very sorry about this Nicolai."

"_LIKE HELL YOU ARE!_" Technus screeched back. Another book struck him. The Ghostwriter grinned in delight.

"Dude, you're enjoying that way too much," said Danny eventually, his eyes wide open. "I thought you didn't like to fight."

"A series of unfortunate events is not a fight," said the Ghostwriter. He was far too happy about this situation, and he showed it with two long rows of _very_ sharp serrated teeth. "Shall we say, it's been a long time coming."

"But can't he… I dunno, kill you or something?"

The ghost shrugged. "I don't know. Can he? Or did he accidentally become part of a pact in which he agreed I wouldn't come to harm, then act like a monumental prat such that I might like to make every book in this god-forsaken library slide off its shelf and hit him? I suppose we'll never know."

… Danny refused to unpack any of that. Technus remained unmoving on the floor as if this might be the best course of action while the Ghostwriter simply stood there, apparently contemplating homicide. This was beyond messed up. But what the heck had he expected when he'd agreed to tutoring sessions in the Ghost Zone?

… Ghostwriter kind of had a point about Technus's math teaching skills, though.

"Now that we have some _peace_ and _quiet_," said Writer, whose teeth were clenched on each of those final descriptors and whose gaze was also fixed precisely on Technus, "Perhaps you could enlighten me as to what you need to study in English class."

Danny breathed. Maybe they could do this. Maybe it was still possible. "Nineteen Eighty-Four," he said, staring at the sheet of paper in front him, covered in mathematics so poorly executed it was a wonder it didn't shift the fabric of space on its own. He swapped it quickly for his English book. "I got to sort of skim it at home, but ghosts kept attacking during Lancer's lectures."

The ghost sat down again, slowly. "… Orwell? All right… A bit dry, but that's fine. They're after an analysis essay, I'm guessing?"

"Yeah."

"Well," the Ghostwriter began, "Those are reasonably straightforward. All you really have to do is read the question, make something up, and argue it."

Danny's eyes narrowed. "Lancer said we shouldn't make stuff up."

"Funny how in an analysis on fiction, the writing of which is the very act of making stuff up, you're asked not to make anything up at all. No, that's a misconception. What you actually need to do is pretend you're the author and lie."

"_Lie_?"

"About _everything_," said the Ghostwriter sagely, tapping his finger on the desk. "You can't know for sure what was in the author's head unless they tell you, which is fine, because it means the English teachers don't know the difference either."

The little cogs and gears inside Danny's brain started to fall into place, but it wasn't a place they'd ever fallen into before. He felt attacked, almost as if stuck in some kind of weird trap, like his fight or flight reflex should be going off. "… That seems pretty suss, why should I even listen to advice like that?"

Ghostwriter seemed almost bored. "You do realise I have a vested interest in not seeing you going insane and killing everyone?"

"Yeah, that seems kind of bad," Technus chimed in from the floor. Writer nodded.

"Even I'm not vindictive enough the jeopardise my own existence."

Danny turned from his paper and looked from one ghost to the other. Were they... suddenly more tired? "… So…" he began, slowly. "Did Clockwork put you both up to this?"

Technus finally managed to peel himself away from the floorboards. "Came knocking on both our doors. Said we had to do something so that That Future didn't happen. It's like, as if you failing classes is tied up in the cosmos to you becoming a mass murderer or something."

Great. Fantastic. Passing his classes was the one thing Danny didn't seem able to do, and that was apparently the tightrope that stopped him from becoming an evil megalomaniac who murders family members and god knows who else. Perfect. Would've been nice if Clockwork could've given him a heads up about that one before his grades started slipping into the D- range. He stared at his empty English book page and groaned.

"God," Danny muttered. "We've gotta make this work…"


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note:**

The words, why are they flying?

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**Doing Math on the River Styx  
**~ **2** ~

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Danny had taken two painkillers before he'd gone home that night.

The headache. God, the _headache_. He'd always sort of known ghosts must be talented in their respective fields of obsession, but he'd never really witnessed it first-hand because he was usually too busy being attacked by them. Technus knew what he was talking about, he just had no ability to pass that knowledge on to anyone but himself. Ghostwriter clearly knew how to teach, but his advice was so backwards compared to common knowledge that Danny scarcely believed half of it.

And then there'd been the drills. The _drills_. Ghostwriter had been attempting to teach Danny how to write essays while teaching Technus how to actually teach, and so, in the middle of giving weird left-of-field helpful tips, had been constantly breaking face to yell at Technus. _Don't_ say it that way, he had impressed. _Don't_ present information without context. _Don't_ assume knowledge is inherently there when it isn't. **_Don't you dare touch that book Nicolai, or I'll—!_**

Technus was like a child. A savant child. With bonus bad behaviour and a clear problem with indignation. Mathematical intelligence from here til Christmas, but God, at what cost?

And then there was Ghostwriter. His problems were centered around never knowing when to stop — Danny was more than just beat, he was _exhausted_. It was three in the morning when he'd hauled himself back through the Fenton Portal, and four before he managed to calm down enough to get some sleep. The Friday morning sunlight had come in not long after that, and then it was time to get up and do it all over again.

Danny dragged himself through school. Lancer probably thought he'd been playing Doomed all night. Must've looked it. Somehow he managed an answer about Orwell when called upon, but it was just as likely he'd hallucinated the whole thing.

… At least the ghosts left him alone, that day.

When the day was done and he'd managed to drag himself home, he was greeted not by his mother, father, sister, or the newest Fenton death machine designed specifically to peel the skin off his ghost half like a particularly unfortunate orange — it was Clockwork.

"Having a long day, aren't we?" the old time ghost grinned from inside Danny's room's doorway. He leaned casually against the frame. "I see you're working hard."

"No thanks to you," said Danny, throwing his schoolbag on top of his bed and quickly closing the bedroom door behind him. Clockwork phased through it. "Are you joking? Why the heck did it have to be Technus and Ghostwriter? Surely there's gotta be other ghosts that can do it!"

Time was stopped. It had to have been. There was suddenly a time medallion around Danny's neck, after all. Clockwork's form changed to his youngest incarnation, moving now to lean upon his staff instead. "I was under the impression you were doing quite well. You even answered that Orwellian question in English class today. I thought it was quite articulate."

"You were watching — was that a _pun_?"

"I'm always watching," said Clockwork calmly, smugly. Danny wasn't sure whether to shudder or just get angry instead. "And as for whether or not that was a pun, I'm sure by now you know the answer. You've seen some benefit from these lessons already and you've only attended one of them."

Fine. Danny didn't want to agree, but the English lesson had at least gone kind of well, as much as it had also destroyed him. But then there was the sticking point: "What about math?" Danny demanded, his hand gesturing wildly as if to prove his point. "Technus is crazy! He just gives me problems and expects me to know the answers! He doesn't know how to teach at all!"

"Oh, I'm sure something will come of it."

Danny hated the way Clockwork smiled knowingly like that, all the damn time. He knew exactly what he was doing and exactly what was going to happen, it's just that Danny couldn't see any possible avenue to ever learn from Technus, regardless of the Ghostwriter's best efforts to reform him. It was like trying to thread a six metre wide steel cube through the eye of a sewing needle — you had to be stupid to even try.

… Stupid or desperate, anyway.

Clockwork seemed to sense the tension. Scratch that — he probably knew about the tension six decades ago. "I wouldn't put you in a situation like this unless it was absolutely necessary, Danny," he said, slowly morphing into his more familiar adult form. "You can at least trust me in that."

He didn't feel that way, but it didn't matter. "Yeah, yeah," he said, brushing Clockwork off all the same. "So what about the other subjects, anyway? The math and English tests are next week, but the week after that I've got, like, science and home economics and history. Who on heck's going to teach those?"

Clockwork raised one of his eyebrows, which disappeared beneath his hood. "I thought you were doing rather well in home economics," he suggested, "But if you're feeling as if it's a struggle, I could always request the services of the Lunch—"

"—_I'm fine_," said Danny, quickly. "Just science and history. God, just science and history _please_."

Clockwork nodded. "Well, you might be surprised, but Spectra—"

"_Spectra_?!" Danny spat.

"—You have objections?" asked Clockwork.

"Oh come on!" said Danny. "You know everything, don't you? You know what she did to me! She even tried to kill Jazz! She's — she's like, the most messed up of any of those ghosts!"

Clockwork sighed and tapped each of his ten fingers in sequence around his staff. "I do. It's just regrettable that in this timestream she is — unbelievably — one of the best people to teach you science. I give you my guarantee she won't bring you or your loved ones to harm, however."

Danny steamed slightly. Of course Clockwork wouldn't lie to him, but the situation was still about as palatable as a pint of motor oil poured on slice of bread, and the small half-ghost wasn't going to give it a rest until he was very sure his conversation partner knew that.

"You might at least like my final suggestion somewhat more," Clockwork added. The grin was no longer unpleasant, just a calming smile, and Danny almost disliked how at ease this put him. "As far as history's concerned, I'll be happy to teach you that myself."

It was as if Danny's brain had jammed in gear, squeaked, and then fallen off the side of a mountain. "_You're_ going to teach me history?"

"Yes."

"Do you even have time for that?" Danny sputtered. "I mean, like—"

It was finally time for Clockwork to cut him off. "I am the Master of Time, Danny, as you put it — there is always time."

"But—"

"However, the time for our little conversation is almost up," Clockwork continued, effectively silencing him, and completely ignoring the little logical plot hole he'd just created. "For now, just do your best with Technus and Ghostwriter. I'm sure it'll be better than you expect." He paused simply to hold up his staff, and that's when Danny knew this was the end of it. "You have my word."

Clockwork disappeared from existence. Moments later, the time medallion around Danny's neck vanished too.

… There were five possible hours of sleep before his next lesson. He decided to catch them.


End file.
